The Outstater
Profanity Is a Political ‘Tell’
AS A SEASONED COPYEDITOR I recoil at the ever more common profanity in my daily reading. My inclination is to prohibit it, as do the contributors to our backgrounder and journal columns.
I have had to grant, however, that outside of blasphemy it may have a place in the larger conversation, albeit a carefully proscribed one. For like it or not, expressive speech in the form of the rude imperative phrase, the obscene interjection or the expletive-not-deleted, is here to stay. But there needs to be a line drawn.
First, let me tell you about “Matilda,” a rough-and-ready Irish farm dog but a delicate flower in one respect.
You won’t hear much profanity in our house but ocassionally, when the computer goes down, or the disposal breaks or the plumbing fails, a mild expression involuntarily but inexcusably escapes. When that happens, however minor the infraction, Matilda, ever since she was a puppy, leaves the room — somewhat indignantly, I have always thought. She simply won’t abide it.
Or perhaps imbedded somewhere in Matilda’s collective unconscious is a memory from previous doggy generations that when humans start cussing, things get thrown around.
Whatever, I think Matilda has the right attitude. People who use profanity should be avoided. I would add that they not only might be dangerous but they might be phony. Callow youth, for instance, have always used profanity to sound grown-up, important.
Democrats, similarly, are using profanity to reinforce a posture that they imagine will win back the demographic segments they lost this last presidential election — namely the young and the blue-collared. In New York, a candidate earlier this month launched his campaign with the bumper-ready slogan, “Unf‑‑‑ Our Country.” In Illinois last month, a liberal commentator told Democrats to “drop the excuses and grow a f‑‑‑ing spine.”
Ben Bergen, a professor of cognitive science, thinks it is a political tell. Here he is quoted in The Hill:
“The linguistic choices that professional politicians make are extremely tightly crafted, It would surprise me if, for many of them, they were sort of stumbling into accidentally using profanity. The use is probably, in most cases, something that’s strategic.”
We can speculate, then, that profanity might become so overused that it sends a self-canceling message, one quite different than what the speaker or writer intended, that is, one of immaturity or inauthenticity..
This is the concern of wiser heads in the party. Michael Wear, former adviser to Barack Obama, has criticized its use in political campaigns: “Democrats who think that vulgarity and dehumanization are reliable, appropriate or beneficial ways to advance their political interests profoundly misunderstand what has happened in our politics and what is required in this moment.” And Liz Smith, a Democrat adviser, had this warning: “Some of it is genuine, some of it is people trying to seem faux-edgy authentic. If the first time you’ve used a cuss word in public is reading off a script, it’s probably not authentic and not something you should do.”
So if I must assign a place for profanity in my stylebook it will be reserved not for desperate politicians but for men in combat or involved in other dangerous or extremely strenuous situations, or the management of real estate, stocks and bonds, and then only in the most extreme circumstances as a direct or indirect warning to others.
Matilda appreciates the difficulty of my decision, although I can tell she isn’t happy about it.. — tcl
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